
‘What’s a common myth about health, nutrition, or fitness that you’ve learned is actually false?’ – 23 wellness fibs to watch out for
Health and wellness is a huge industry nowadays and makes a lot of people a lot of money – just look at Gwyneth Paltrow and her Psychic Vampire Repellent spray. But, as the aforementioned spray demonstrates, not everything you hear about looking after your well-being is one hundred percent based on science.
To put it even more plainly: a lot of it is total nonsense. They’ve been sorting the health-based wheat from the chaff on the AskReddit page after user urasianbella asked:
What’s a common myth about health, nutrition, or fitness that you’ve learned is actually false?
And lots of people chipped in with things that are, quite frankly, porkies.
1.
‘Potatoes are actually nutrient dense, not just starch. Edit: the myth is that taters are just starch.’
–Lyrabelle
2.
‘Detox teas don’t work. You’re just paying to have diarrhea. Your organs do the real detoxing, for free.’
–spiderdu10
3.
‘Also, ‘flat tummy’ teas. These teas’ key ingredients are laxatives. Ergo, you look ‘thinner’ because you’re dehydrating yourself. That ‘weight’ you’ve lost, you’ll gain it right back as soon as you rehydrate.’
–Mango_Tango_725
4.
‘I thought black people (me) didn’t need sunscreen because melanin protects us against the sun. Evidently that’s not entirely true.’
–Icy-Whale-2253
5.
‘That you can target fat by doing specific workouts. You can’t. You can build muscle by doing specific workouts but your body will burn fat from where it wants, not in that one area. Luckily, it’s made weeding out the workout frauds much easier!’
–NeedsItRough
6.
‘That heart disease is essentially a one-way trip. You can absolutely reverse arterial plaque buildup with the right diet and a bit of exercise.’
–HastyToweling
7.
‘Natural means nothing. It’s a logical fallacy. Arsenic is natural, mercury is natural, lots of natural things are toxic. Stop trying to convince me that something is good because it’s natural. Oh and that goes triple for chemicals that are used. Natural doesn’t mean it’s better. I recently read how a winery was using a natural herbicide. It’s a lot more toxic than the artificial ones. They were poisoning people.’
–Impulsespeed37
8.
‘Eat fat, get fat. Fat is actually important in your diet.’
–Loisalene
9.
‘There’s no real such thing as a ‘cleanse’. Own a liver? That’s how we do a cleanse for real.’
–Haephestus
10.
‘That fitness influencers look like that because they work hard. The majority of them are on steroids.’
–Bartok_and_croutons
11.
‘Women just need cardio. Wrong. Women need resistance/strength training even more than men because of bone density issues at menopause and resistance training is the primary means of increasing bone density.’
–hammilithome
12.
‘You can do everything ‘right’, illness, disease and old age will still happen.’
–ImeWeb